http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/news/print.jsp?ymd=20120531&content_id=32561850&vkey=news_cle&c_id=cle

Tribe may lean toward pitching with first pick

By Jordan Bastian / MLB.com

CLEVELAND—Drafting based on an organizational need can be a dangerous strategy. Even when a team’s perceived need aligns with the strength of a particular Draft class, teams are wary of the risks involved in overlooking other options.

“As soon as you start to draft towards needs,” said Brad Grant, the Indians’ director of amateur scouting, “I think that’s when you can make mistakes. I think it’s important to take the best player available. You take the player that you feel has the most ability rather than concentrating on needs.”

That said, Cleveland, which has the 15^th overall pick in the first round in this year’s First-Year Player Draft, is suddenly thin on top starting pitching prospects.

At the July 31 Trade Deadline last summer, the Indians packaged Alex White and Drew Pomeranz—the Tribe’s top picks in 2009 and ‘10, respectively—in the five-player swap with the Rockies that brought Ubaldo Jimenez to Cleveland. That removed the Indians’ top two pitching prospects with one handshake.

Another highly-regarding starting prospect, left-hander Scott Barnes, has been converted to a relief role and is in Cleveland’s bullpen. Austin Adams, who was in big league camp this spring, is shelved after right shoulder surgery. Righty Dillon Howard (a second-round pick last June) has yet to throw a professional pitch.

This could be an opportune time for the Indians to target an arm in the first round.

“There is some excitement level to the college pitching,” Grant said. “And, there’s also some excitement level to the high school players.”

Last June, the Indians strayed from their recent approach and selected a prep star with their first overall choice, grabbing shortstop Francisco Lindor with the eighth pick in the first round. Through 45 games at low Class A Lake County this season, the 18-year-old Lindor has hit .292 with four homers, nine doubles, three triples, 11 stolen bases, 13 walks, 19 RBIs and 30 runs scored.

Asked about Lindor’s early success, Grant could not help but smile.

“It’s been exciting. It’s been fun,” Grant said. “We knew he’d be able to have the range and do the special things he can do defensively. ... We expected him to hit, but to hit at that level and be that successful kind of exceeded our expectations a little bit. It’s been a lot of fun to watch. I think the biggest thing is just his leadership there.

“For an 18-year-old to have that kind of makeup and that kind of leadership, and kind of take over that club the way he’s been able to take over, it’s been pretty special.”

Lindor’s production out of the gates could help convince Cleveland to keep an open mind about selecting high school athletes going forward. Then again, Grant insists that the Tribe’s Draft strategy is a simple case of listing the available players in order by talent and taking the one that remains on top when the time comes for the club’s pick.

“We’re looking to take the best player available, especially in this year’s Draft,” Grant said. “We’re not going to eliminate anybody. We’re going to line them up strictly on ability and take the best player available.”

Here’s a glance at what the Indians have in store as the Draft approaches:

In about 50 words
The Indians have the 15^th overall pick in this year’s Draft, marking the fourth straight year that the Tribe has had a Top 15 selection. Cleveland will later pick 79^th (second round), 110^th (third round) and then 15^th in each round the rest of the way.

The scoop
”The industry consensus is probably a little bit stronger on college pitching,” Indians general manager Chris Antonetti said. “The high school ranks are relatively balanced. There aren’t too many college position players.”

First-round buzz
Once the Draft moves beyond the first handful of picks, it can be difficult to project which players will fall to certain teams. That said, this year it is not even clear how the first few selections will go in the first round.

“There’s less certainly this year,” Grant said. “Normally at this point in time, you kind of hear who’s one and who’s two. I think it’s still up in the air. I think teams are still kind of working through the process like we are, and going through it to try to figure out what order they want to put them in.”

Such uncertainty up and down the board can create a scenario where teams want to put the percentages in their favor. This year, collegiate pitching is considered the strength of the Draft and Cleveland has a history of preferring college arms to prep arms. Collegiate pitchers can be more predictable with a higher probability of rising swiftly through a farm system.

Some first-round options along those lines include right-handers Michael Wacha (Texas A&M), Chris Stratton (Mississippi State) and Marcus Stroman (Duke), as well as left-hander Andrew Heaney (Oklahoma State).

INDIANS’ BONUS POOL

* Rank in terms of total bonus pool $

Money matters
Under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, each team has an allotted bonus pool equal to the sum of the values of that club’s selections in the first 10 rounds of the Draft. The more picks a team has, and the earlier it picks, the larger the pool. The signing bonuses for a team’s selections in the first 10 rounds, plus any bonus greater than $100,000 for a player taken after the 10^th round, will apply toward the bonus-pool total.

The Indians have roughly $4.5 million available for their first 10 selections.

Any team going up to five percent over its allotted pool will be taxed at a 75 percent rate on the overage. A team that overspends by 5-10 percent gets a 75 percent tax plus the loss of a first-round pick. A team that goes 10-15 percent over its pool amount will be hit with a 100 percent penalty on the overage and the loss of a first- and second-round pick. Any overage of 15 percent or more gets a 100 percent tax plus the loss of first-round picks in the next two Drafts.

Shopping list
Pitching seems to be the primary need for the early rounds this year. That does not mean the Tribe is dead set on selecting an arm with its top pick. The Indians suddenly have a surplus of middle-infield talent in their farm system, especially at the lower levels, but that might not deter the club from taking another middle infielder if the player in question is deemed the best player available.

“I think you can never have enough middle infielders,” Grant said. “The more talent you have, the better. You can’t predict what’s going to happen at the Major League level. Things change on a day-to-day basis. And things change at the Minor League level on a day-to-day basis. So it’s just get the best talent, get the most talent and continue to just strive to add to your farm system.”

Trend watch 
The Indians had taken a collegiate player with their first selection in nine consecutive Drafts before making Lindor their top pick (eighth overall) last summer. Lindor was the first position player taken by Cleveland since 2008. The Indians might lean toward college pitching again this year with their first selection. The exception might be if a highly-touted prep position player sits atop their board when the 15^th pick rolls around.

Recent Draft History
Rising fast
The Indians selected right-hander Cody Allen in the 16^th round of the 2010 Draft and the pitcher has enjoyed a rapid rise up the organizational ladder. Through 39 professional appearances, the 23-year-old Allen had a 1.91 ERA with 107 strikeouts against 18 walks over 80 innings between stops at five levels. The righty is at Triple-A Columbus.

INDIANS’ RECENT TOP PICKS

Cinderella story
Indians starter Josh Tomlin was the 581^st overall pick (19^th round) in the 2006 First-Year Player Draft. The right-hander was an infielder at Angelina Junior College in Lufkin, Texas, for two years before pitching for Texas Tech in 2006. In Cleveland’s farm system, the right-hander went 51-24 with a 3.20 ERA over parts of five seasons. Since reaching the Majors in 2010, Tomlin has gone 20-13 with a 4.44 ERA through 45 career outings for the Indians.

In The Show
Only five players on the Indians’ active roster were selected by Cleveland in the First-Year Player Draft. That group includes left-handed reliever Tony Sipp (45^th round, 2004), Tomlin (19^th round, ‘06), right-handed reliever Vinnie Pestano (20^th round, ‘06), third baseman Lonnie Chisenhall (first round, ‘08) and second baseman Jason Kipnis (second round, ‘09).

http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/draft/draft-preview/2012/2613472.html

New Draft Rules Put Premium On Predictability

By Jerry Crasnick
May 31, 2012

Since its inception in 1965, Major League Baseball’s draft has been the perfect mechanism to introduce high school and college talent to the pros. Come draft day, scouts sit at a table and ruminate about “good faces” and 80-grade arms amid a pile of deli sandwich bags and pizza boxes in the war room. Potential draftees wait patiently for the call before hugging mom and dad in celebration of a dream attained. The process plays out in an orderly fashion, with a minimum of backroom dealing and gamesmanship and an emphasis on fairness.

Uhh . . . not exactly.

Maybe it worked that way in Rick Reichardt’s heyday, but things have changed markedly over the past quarter century. The influence of agents, or “advisers” as they’re called to keep the NCAA at bay, increased (with an emphasis on one particular agency in Newport Beach, Calif.). And baseball’s owners started to feel as if they were held hostage by the process. They began sending stronger signals to commissioner Bud Selig that they wanted to get their hands back on the wheel, and the draft became a centerpiece of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Now we’re about to see the fallout. Draft spending increased from $161 million in 2006 to $236 million in 2011, and it’s anticipated that clubs will spend closer to $200 million this year. Rob Manfred, MLB’s executive vice president of labor relations, says it was more a case of making the draft operate as its founding fathers intended.

”What we hoped to achieve through the system was to restore the draft to its original purpose,” Manfred says. “That’s what the commissioner said when we got into this whole business. We see that purpose as the best players being available to the lowest-finishing clubs. We think the beauty of this system is that they’re going to be available at a reasonably predictable price.”

The MLB Players Association wasn’t anxious for an overhaul, but relented in several areas because the commissioner’s office made it such a priority. The draft’s new bonus structure is part of a bigger, overarching framework that includes the international signing market, free-agent compensation changes and a bonus-pick lottery for low-revenue teams.

”These were all management proposals,” union executive director Michael Weiner says. “We didn’t come in looking to change the draft. It was an important area of negotiation from the clubs’ perspective. They claimed it was designed to improve competitive balance. We said, ‘The teams that are spending a lot of money in the draft recently are teams like Pittsburgh and Kansas City, who see it as an arena where they can really compete.’ We raised questions and we made compromises. But it remains to be seen what effect this will have on competitiveness.” 

After years of making bonus recommendations and finding that some clubs toed the line while others fielded the obligatory admonishing phone call from Selig and then spent what they wanted, baseball has enacted a system with more teeth in it. 

Teams have a predetermined amount of money available to spend each year. The Astros, who pick first this year, have an $11.2 million budget for 11 picks through the first 10 rounds. The Twins have 13 picks and a $12.4 million pool over the first 10 rounds. At the bottom end of the food chain you’ll find the Angels, who can spend a mere $1.6 million on eight picks after losing their top two choices as compensation for signing free agents Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson.

Teams incur progressively steeper penalties for overspending. Exceed your designated limit by 5 percent, and you pay a 75 percent tax on the overage. As the percentage increases, offending teams could be on the hook for a 100 percent tax payment and the loss of two future first-round picks. Those penalties might be worth considering if the prize is a Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg or another once-in-a-generation prospect. But the 2012 draft is one of the weakest in recent memory, so this will not be the year.

If you whiff on signing a pick, you can’t use that money on other players. Last year the Blue Jays failed to sign pitcher Tyler Beede, the 21^st overall pick, but spent the money budgeted for him elsewhere. If they had the same result this year, they would simply lose the allotted $1.8 million for the slot.

After the 10^th round, teams can sign as many players as they want for less than $100,000, all the way through round 40 (as opposed to 50 rounds under the previous system). Anything over $100,000 for a player will count against a club’s budget. An American League scouting director predicts that college juniors will be lining up for “one-size-fits-all deals” and help to fill those minor league roster spots. “We’re going to need numbers,” the scouting director says.

Some elements of the new system are popular. Scouting directors seem to favor the prohibition on major league contracts for draft picks. Teams also like the new mid-July signing deadline (July 13 this year), a month earlier than the previous D-Day of August 15. It makes for a month less of indecision and sweating. And the quicker draft picks sign, the quicker they can go out and play.

”When we had that long waiting period until August 15, it made no sense,” a National League scouting director says. “This will be huge, especially with the college guys. The point is to get them out there, get them playing and get them to the big leagues so they can help your team a little sooner. This accelerates them a hair. Instead of going to High A their first full season, they may go to Double-A. This puts them a little closer.”

Some front-office people, such as Padres general manager Josh Byrnes, think Manfred and Weiner did a skillful job in establishing new parameters. San Diego has six of the first 70 picks and the third-highest bonus pool at $9.9 million, so it has a lot at stake in the 2012 draft.

”We had sort of gotten away from the draft model that if you’re a player, you want to be taken as high as you can possibly be taken,” Byrnes says. “I think this system reinforces that concept. You want to get drafted as high as you can get drafted, rather than deliver yourself to the team that will write the biggest check. This system really rewards good scouting as opposed to strategy.” 

Signability Is Paramount

Predictably, the changes prompted bellyaching in certain circles. The Pirates and Royals have, indeed, spent liberally in recent drafts. In the overall scheme of things, that $10 million-12 million annual investment is a pittance compared to what the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies and other big shooters spend on free agents. But large draft payouts don’t necessarily ensure a team will hit the jackpot. BA rated Pittsburgh’s farm system as the 11^th-best in baseball entering this year, and that’s not going to rescue the Pirates from two decades of losing anytime soon.

 “Just because you’re spending a lot of money, it doesn’t mean crap unless you’re evaluating the right players,” a NL scouting director says. “Sometimes it’s eyewash. If you’re throwing a lot of money at guys and evaluating it right, theoretically it should give you an advantage. But it doesn’t matter if you’re throwing money at the wrong guys.”

Regardless of the system or the size of bonuses, the concept of “signability” always has been pivotal in the draft. Scouts can salivate over a player’s wheels, arm, bat speed and intangibles. But it doesn’t matter if his asking price is beyond an organization’s comfort zone. Numerous scouting directors and front-office officials say MLB’s new system has raised the stakes for teams. In the past, clubs had the option of ponying up an extra $500,000 if an area scout misread a draft pick’s price point. No more.

 “I think signability is more critical this year than in any other year I’ve been involved in the draft,” an AL scouting director says. “It’s going to require teams and people like me to do things we aren’t normally accustomed to doing, and that’s getting a bottom line figure by the draft. There will be deals cut because basically it’s our jobs at stake now. If we don’t sign an individual for the amount that we have to sign them, it could jeopardize our whole draft.”

The athletes affected by the process come in all shapes, sizes and talent levels. A year ago, the Royals gave No. 5 overall choice Bubba Starling $7.5 million over three years to dissuade him from playing quarterback at Nebraska. This year Kansas City has $3.5 million available for that same No. 5 choice and a $6.1 million allotment for its first 10 picks. So it’s safe to say Starling would be a Cornhusker right now if this system were in place in 2011.

Last year, high school outfielder Josh Bell made it clear he was going to Texas until the Pirates forked over a $5 million bonus. Bell hit the mother lode as the 61^st pick in the draft. This year the 61^st pick, which belongs to the Astros, is penciled in at $844,100. So something has to give.

”Now you would either have to select him in a spot where you can give him a lot of money, or he’s going to go to college,” an AL scouting director says. “There are a lot of other high school kids that we’ve taken in rounds two to 10 and given a lot of money to, and we’re not going to be able to do that now. So you won’t select them or you won’t sign them, because you’re going to offer a slot that’s way lower than they’re hoping, believing and thinking they’re worth.”

The elite talents—like Georgia high school outfielder Byron Buxton, Baseball America’s top-rated prospect for the draft—will sign in the first round and pocket enough money to be set for life. Some other kids who simply aren’t cut out for college also will take the plunge. But many decision-makers think it’s inevitable that the new system will funnel a lot more prep talent to colleges and junior colleges. That’s just fine with the commissioner’s office, which doesn’t mind the thought of colleges serving as a feeder system. Welcome to baseball’s more NFL-like approach.

It remains to be seen how well-equipped college baseball programs are to handle the influx. NCAA Division I programs are currently limited to 11.7 scholarships each, and MLB and the union are working with the NCAA to contribute money to expand that allotment. Baseball also needs to find a way to better attract more African-American talent. A window of opportunity could be opening as more parents debate whether to let their kids play football in the midst of the NFL’s concussion crisis.

Trust Your Area Scout

The new system places a premium on area scouts to forge relationships and do the reconnaissance to give teams a sense of security. In this respect, it marks a return to values that baseball held dear before the draft became such big business.

Eddie Bane can relate. During his time as scouting director with the Angels, Bane took some major signability hits. The list of prospects who got away includes Khiry Cooper, who passed on pro baseball to play wide receiver at Nebraska, and Pat White, who made a similar choice to play quarterback at West Virginia. But Bane also scored a monster hit in the 2009 draft when he selected New Jersey high school outfielder Mike Trout with the 25^th overall pick.

Amid rumblings that Trout’s price tag was increasing to as much as $3.5 million the night before the draft, Bane had confidence in his initial number because Los Angeles was convinced that Jeff and Debbie Trout would stay true to their word. Angels scout Greg Morhardt had a longstanding relationship with the family, and it paid off when Trout agreed to sign for a slot bonus of $1.215 million a week after the draft. If the new system does anything, it magnifies the importance of developing ties with players.

”Now you better spend time with that kid in August and September or go up and watch his high school team play basketball in November,” says Bane, now a major league scout with the Tigers. “You take him out to dinner then instead of getting to know him in May. That’s where the area scout can do some damage. I hate to see the area scout at the Area Code Games, and all he does is sit there for four days and not interact with the parents or take the kid out to dinner. That’s where you make your hay.”

Predraft deals are technically against baseball rules, but it’s no secret that they happen every year. They’ll become even more critical in 2012 as teams will have so much less wiggle room.

That dynamic only can heighten the profile and influence of baseball’s relentless foot soldiers: the area guys. One AL scouting director says he expects to see more area scouts in homes this year on draft day, collecting signatures just moments after clubs have made their selections.

The old agent ploy of slow-playing negotiations for leverage is passé, because the leverage belongs to the clubs now. If an adviser isn’t willing to give a concrete answer, a team will simply pass and move on to the next player. It’s a risky bet for a kid and his parents to dally. Wait too long, and you might find yourself signing 10 spots later for significantly less money.

”I’ve told agents, ‘Talk to your client, get your bottom-line number and then be by the phone,” a NL general manager says. “When it’s draft day, if our slot is $1 million and our pick is five minutes away and we call you and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to take your guy and we’re going to offer him 900,000,’ it’s yes or no. It’s not a negotiation. If you say no, you better hope he doesn’t fall three more picks, because then you’re swimming upstream.”

Say Goodbye To The Wild West

Some wonder if agents eventually could be rendered obsolete under baseball’s changing draft landscape. If a prospect is slotted in for $2 million as the 17^th pick in the draft, why does he need to hand over $100,000 to an agent to facilitate his deal? His parents can simply put out an all-points-bulletin that he’s amenable to signing and pocket the entire amount. Mom and dad don’t have to worry about being overwhelmed by the process, because there’s little negotiating involved. In some respects, it’s less hassle-filled than strolling into a showroom and buying a new car.

Long before the draft takes place, families will have to sit down and determine whether the value of a college scholarship outweighs the instant reward of a signing bonus. In many cases, they’ll be making the call without stars in their eyes.

”This is going to be a serious education for players and their families,” an AL personnel man says. “It’s been like the Wild West out there for a while. But you’re not comparing apples to apples with the new system and this one. It’s not even in the same orchard.”

Changing times may also accentuate the different approaches of agents. San Francisco-based agent Matt Sosnick has built a successful business by working the draft, forging ties with front offices and, in numerous cases, getting players bumped up because teams knew they were amenable to signing quickly. Last year, Sosnick represented four of the first 60 players in the draft. He thinks teams are going to be more anxious than ever to work with agents who are up front and less inclined to foster an air of mystery.

 “I think teams are going to make every effort, particularly in the first couple of rounds, to try to have very finite deals in place before they make a pick,” Sosnick says. “There’s no safety net of another pick or the ability to spend money later in the draft. It ends up being a do-or-die with every pick you make. And I just don’t foresee many teams being willing to pick a guy with no thought to what it’s going to cost them.”

Scott Boras, of course, takes a decidedly different approach. Given his inventiveness and lengthy track record of blazing trails in draft strategy, many front-office people wonder if Boras can find another loophole to exploit. If he has, he’s keeping it a secret.

Boras says he thinks the new system places more of a premium than ever on experienced advisers who can evaluate talent and correctly assess the value of prospects, rather than be backed into a corner by external forces.

This year’s draft might not prove to be a real test of potential glitches in the system, because the talent pool is relatively weak, and might breed a false sense of security among clubs. Think back to the 2005 draft that produced Justin Upton, Alex Gordon, Ryan Braun, Ryan Zimmerman, Troy Tulowitzki, Cameron Maybin, Andrew McCutchen and Jay Bruce among the top 12 picks. It might be tough finding enough money for a class like that under the new system. 

”The need for experienced representation that knows the value of athletes is in the greatest demand in that type of situation,” Boras says. “If a player doesn’t know what his value is, he can fall prey to this need for early negotiation and not getting a number that he’s truly worth. That evaluation is very difficult in the draft. It requires a great deal of experience and very knowledgeable people who’ve been through it many, many times.”

Boras has been relatively muted in his criticism of the new draft system, but he sees areas where he says it can be improved. For starters, he would like to see teams given more spending flexibility. Not all drafts are created equal, Boras contends, so why not give teams a designated amount of cash over a five-year period, then let them make the call on how much money they should allocate each year based on the talent available?

”If you went to teams and said, ‘Over a five-year period, you can spend this amount of money and spend it in whatever years you want,’ that system has more of a chance of fairness,” Boras says. “In drafts, the talent comes in waves. It does not come in a uniform annual basis. We want scouting to take its effect. If you give teams flexibility, your scouting system might tell you, ‘This is going to be a great year.’ Scouting operates the way it should. We have to accommodate for the relative lack of consistency with which entry talent is available. This system is void of that very critical consideration.”

Boras also proposes rewarding successful low-revenue teams. So if the Rays pick high in the draft and finish first in the AL East, they should be allowed to retain a $10 million allotment the following year, for example, even if they’re picking 28^th.

”If you’re a revenue-sharing club and you win a division, your draft allocation does not get limited,” Boras says. “But you have to win. If you finish second, it doesn’t work.”

Those ideas could be grist for future discussion and revision. In the short term, baseball’s 30 clubs will have to navigate on the fly. A team can try to cut corners with its first-round pick in anticipation of using the savings in subsequent rounds—with no certainty which players will be available later in the draft. It’s the equivalent of trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with only some of the pieces in front of you.

”Before, you could do it one player at a time,” says Jeff Luhnow, who owns the No. 1 overall pick in his first year as Astros GM. “Let’s make a decision: Are we going to go over slot on this player or not? Of course, your overall budget was impacted. But each pick sort of stood in isolation. Now you have to be more of an orchestra conductor. There’s definitely going to be more coordination of signings required.”

The process of amateur talent acquisition has entered a whole new phase in its evolution, and front-office people, scouts, advisers, parents and the players themselves are about to see how the storyline unfolds. The draft is set to go. We’re about to find out if baseball is ready for it.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/draft/draft-preview/2012/2613471.html

Scouting Is Only Part Of The Equation

By Conor Glassey
May 30, 2012

The key to a strong scouting department is, not surprisingly, scouts. But there’s much more to drafting a player than a scout simply liking what he sees on the field.

First, the scout himself has to be managed. He needs the right tools and needs to be in the right place at the right time. Then when he generates scouting reports and other information, that all needs to be organized so a team can use it to make meaningful, informed decisions.

None of this happens by accident. While the scouting director is ultimately responsible for it, it’s the people in scouting administration who get it done, and they may be even more unsung than scouts.

”Right now we’re in full draft-prep mode,” Dodgers manager of scouting and travel administration Jane Capobianco said. “So we’re compiling all the draft reports, all the medical information, we’re looking at signability information and we’re starting our draft board. That’s a daily process to consolidate and collaborate all the data to make sure it’s up-to-date and informative, so that when we get into the draft room, we’ll be able to make the best decisions for our club.”

Every player a team wants to draft has to be turned in to the Major League Scouting Bureau and assigned an identification number. Teams have all kinds of paperwork on the top players—medical reports, psychological tests, vision tests, biological and contact information—that goes into an internal database.

Capobianco manages that information, as well as the Dodgers’ leased vehicle program and the scouting budget. She also serves as a liaison with the 40 scouts the Dodgers employ.

”I think in terms of skill sets, you have to be a solid planner and be really flexible,” Capobianco said. “Conflict resolution is very important. You have to be very accurate—I do all the contracts once we draft the players, so I think you have to have a strong attention to detail for all the data we’re handling.” The Dodgers use a travel management company, but Capobianco handles contract negotiations with airlines, rental car companies and hotels and provides assistance when scouts get into a travel pinch

”We don’t have a lot of down time,” Capobianco said, but noted she does occasionally go to games. “Like, we have a game today and I’d love to be able to watch that game, but I can’t.” “I get out locally when it’s not busy to see some of the top players. I’ll go out with the scouts and usually see players with an OFP over 50 or something.”The Brewers’ manager of amateur scouting, Amanda Kropp, has similar responsibilities. She doesn’t book travel for the scouts, but she does help manage their expenses while they’re on the road. She also helps scouting director Bruce Seid coordinate scheduling, looking for the best matchups and keeping tabs on the weather so Seid and his crosscheckers can decide where to go.

”It gets pretty crazy at the end of March, early April, just trying to stay on top of it,” Kropp said. “With the high school season kicking in, the player reports are really coming in. The offseason is much slower, which is good for that balance, but I also handle our college scholarship program, for any player that may have been awarded that. So that usually is very busy in the summer and early fall with registration.”

Kropp also takes in and organizes the video that scouts send in and works closely with Tod Johnson, the Brewers’ assistant director of baseball research for scouting, does statistical analysis on college players, looking for trends and similarities to players in the past. The Brewers’ draft room is equipped with several SMART Boards, and Johnson’s goal for this year is to eliminate the regular magnets with player names and replace them with movable names on interactive touch screens.

”We do our own park factors and I do my own strength of schedule stuff,” Johnson said. “And then just some analytical analysis of what types of previous performances have resulted in guys who were successful at the professional level. Just trying to understand the stats and then putting them into correct context with the new bats, the parks, competition and all those various other things. That’s just a piece and a tool that we use here to come up with questions to ask.”

Before joining the Brewers, Johnson spent nearly five years at Microsoft. He started out in Milwaukee’s information technology department and showed a knack for statistical analysis., and he got involved with the baseball side of things at the urging of former assistant scouting director Tony Blengino. The Brewers sent him to scout school in 2008, when he was still in the IT department.

”It was a great thing for me to kind of get out and see what our scouts deal with at games,” Johnson said. “It gave me a really good appreciation for what they do and an understanding of what goes into scouting reports.”

http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/draft/news/2012/2613449.html

Times Change, But Scouting Remains The Same

By Conor Glassey
May 30, 2012

Tim Wilken is the most respected scouting director in baseball. (We’re not just saying that; we actually asked.)

When Wilken, 57, started as a scout with Toronto in 1979, the Blue Jays’ current scouting director, Andrew Tinnish, was 2 years old. 

As an area scout, Wilken signed Jimmy Key and Derek Bell. When he was the Blue Jays’ national crosschecker, the team drafted Shawn Green, Shannon Stewart, Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter. As the Jays’ scouting director, he called out the names of Vernon Wells, Michael Young, Orlando Hudson, Felipe Lopez and Alex Rios. With the Rays, he drafted Jeremy Hellickson, and as scouting director for the Cubs (his current post) he drafted Jeff Samardzija and Darwin Barney.

As a scouting director, he has also drafted Pete Tucci, Mike Snyder, Miguel Negron, Wade Townsend and Chris Huseby.

And that’s just a sampling of Wilken’s many failures. That doesn’t make him special. It makes him a scouting director.

In a sport that famously considers three out of 10 successful, scouting directors rarely even approach that bar. The men charged with organizing a team’s scouting efforts and calling out the names of the players that will shape the organization’s future on draft day can consider their year’s effort successful if they find one major league regular, or a player who can be used as a trade chip. If they find multiple players like that in the same draft, they become the stuff of baseball folklore.

Scouting directors toil in relative obscurity, spending more than half of the year away from their wives and children, with the hope that the players they choose in the draft will help their club in some way.

The job of scouting director requires an alchemy of managing people, developing a knack for administration, staying on top of technology and traveling—lots and lots of traveling. In many ways the job has changed radically in the last 20 years. At the end of the day, though, being a good scouting director comes down to having a knack for evaluating baseball talent. And that is not likely to change.

”I think you have more tools to evaluate with, but I think it still comes down to having a feel, recognizing the tools of a player and your gut instincts,” Phillies scouting director Marti Wolever said. “It’s like everything else in society—whatever’s new on the block, we tend to gravitate toward. But I think it always comes full circle back to having the ability to evaluate a player. That’s very instinctual. You want as many tools as you possibly can in order to make a great decision and you want to have great people around you to help you do it.”

Disseminating Knowledge

Wilken is a big believer in that philosophy. He grew up around the game, and his father, Karl, played in the St. Louis Browns organization in the 1930s and ‘40s before becoming a scout in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois for the Phillies. He signed several major leaguers, most notably Hall of Famer Robin Roberts out of Michigan State. The family moved to Florida in 1967 and Karl scouted part-time for the Pirates, but he died in 1972, when Tim was 18.

”Unfortunately, I never got to be a scout when he was alive,” Wilken said. “But some of the things he talked about liking with fielders was flexibility in their trunk, their lateral agility. How they moved side to side, he was really big on that. He was more of a pitching guy, so he probably taught me a lot about arm actions and body control in a pitcher. Those are the things I picked up the most.”

Now, Wilken passes his depth of knowledge on to his scouts. Every scouting director works with his scouts differently and has his own methods for managing them, both in teaching them how to develop an eye for talent and managing them as employees.

”I try to keep things just right, and just right means not calling too much,” Wilken said. “There’s got to be a sense of being independent and letting people be able to work by themselves and not being over their shoulder and not micromanaging. It’s a very simple approach that I’ve had, but it’s just to treat people the way that you would like to be treated.”

That’s easier with a veteran scouting staff, which Wilken largely has with the Cubs. But he also has three first-year scouts, so he has spent more time with them to help them learn the ropes.

”He’s made a point of being out with me and seeing my guys and talking with me about how things play out,” said Tom Myers, who spent five years in the minor leagues and was a college coach before getting into scouting. “And then, as a person, he’s always asking me questions. The interaction has been outstanding. Right from the get-go, he wanted to know about me. He wanted to learn my background and about my family. It’s been nice that I can interact with him and feel comfortable, not just as my boss, but more like a teammate. I’m part of a team and he’s been my teammate since day one.”

That’s a key point, because ultimately a scouting director is only as good as his scouts. They all need to know and share in the team’s overarching philosophy, and they have to have a feeling of mutual trust. The scouting director will be the one making the final decisions on draft day and will ultimately be responsible for the picks, but he can’t see everyone.

”As a scouting director I’ve got to pull the card, but I’ve listened to a lot of other people’s evaluations,” one National League scouting director said. “Managing people, not to get them to do what you want them to do, but getting them to want to do what you want them to do, that’s the big key. Managing people is one of the biggest parts of this job and keeping people positive. Because it’s a negative business. It’s a failure business. A lot of things around you are negative—baseball is just set up that way. So keeping guys positive every day and still hustling is really big. It’s a grind.”

Scouting directors agree that being a good evaluator is a prerequisite for the job, but once you’re in it, the ability to manage your people becomes at least as important as your ability to judge players.

”I mean, you’re one person. So on the evaluation side of it, you’re just one person in this big network of it,” Indians scouting director Brad Grant said. “Your ability to manage people, manage the flow of information and manage the decision-making process is the biggest part to it. That’s the part where, all of a sudden, you’re constantly asked to make decisions on so many different things. It’s not just making decisions on players. There’s personnel decisions, there’s decisions on signing players, it’s just a constant process of making decisions.”

The first step is to gain the trust and respect of the people working for you. Twins scouting director Deron Johnson said he always thinks about a mantra he learned from an older scout: “People want to know that you care before they care what you know.”

The NL scouting director said he regularly e-mails his staff to help keep them motivated and on the same page. He also makes sure to compliment scouts when they do good work.

”Those good area men and crosscheckers are hard to find, so when you’ve got them you need to let them know that you appreciate what they do,” he said. “They make me look good or bad, so I let them know how much I appreciate their work and their time away from their family and how much it means to the organization.”

The baseball part of the job is sometimes the easiest part of the job. When you’re managing people, you also have to deal with all the ups and downs that come along with them.

”Scouts have their cars break down, they get flat tires, they sit in the stands and rip their pants, they get sick on the road

. . . there’s all kinds of things,” a second NL scouting director said. “Being a scouting director, I’ve had guys get DUIs, I’ve had guys go through wicked divorces, you have a guy that’s having psychological problems and you want to help them through that, you have guys who have a child or a wife that gets really sick and they have trouble focusing. It’s a fun job, but there’s so much that goes into it.”

Money Matters

Managing people is only part of it, though. Rising to the level of scouting director means you’re also managing the organization’s money. There are salaries, travel budgets, and oh yes, the minor matter of the signing budget.

Teams typically set their yearly scouting budgets in the fall, and the last thing a scouting director ever wants to do is have to take a scout off the road because he underestimated costs. Most teams budget between $800,000-$900,000 for their scouts’ hotels, airfare, rental cars and meals for the year.

Then come the salaries. Depending on experience, area scouts typically make $35,000-$70,000 a year. Regional crosscheckers make $65,000-$85,000 and national crosscheckers earn about $85,000-$125,000. Scouting directors make $125,000-$275,000.

The real explosion in spending has come in signing budgets, however. In 2011, 231 drafted players signed for more than Ken Griffey Jr. did when he was drafted first overall in 1987 ($160,000)—and 41 of those players were taken in the 11^th round or later. In 1990, the average first-rounder signed for $252,577. The average topped $1 million for the first time in 1997, and last year the number reached an all-time high of $2,653,375. Teams spent a shade over $228 million to sign draft picks last year, with 10 teams spending more than $10 million.

The new Collective Bargaining Agreement brings new draft rules this year, and with stricter limits on spending signability should again have a significant influence on whom a scouting director drafts. (For more on this, see the story on Page 20).

Scouting directors are accustomed to change, though. Wilken has been scouting for 33 years and can remember when he had to find pay phones to check in with the front office, subscribe to newspapers from around the country to keep up with college players and navigate to remote fields or players’ homes with unwieldy maps and dead reckoning. He has an old-school mentality, but he’s also able to adapt. He has a new item in his bag this year, for example: A video camera that he stores in a Crown Royal pouch.

The Cubs are building a video library of the top high school and college players under the direction of new president Theo Epstein, something that would have been unwieldy 10 years ago and nearly impossible 20 years ago. Now scouts can film the video, watch it in their hotel rooms and upload it to the home office.

The changes have come fast and furious, particularly in the last 10 years. Radar guns have improved and become more portable. Scouts now generate their reports on computers (or even on their smartphones) and e-mail or upload them to their front office, and most organizations have databases set up to organize every player’s biographical information, background, medical history, psychological tests, vision tests, scouting reports, statistical analysis and video.

Scouts use computers (and their phones) to find all the schedules for teams in their area on the Internet and stay on top of game cancellations via e-mail and Twitter. 

”We have a lot of information at our fingertips,” the first NL scouting director said. “The communication we have has made it a lot better as far as getting more stuff done. In the old days, guys would write out reports by hand and mail them in . . . That wasn’t even that long ago, probably the ‘90s. Now guys just get on the computer and I’m seeing reports the same day.”

Then there are the innovations that haven’t changed the job of scouting but have improved the lifestyle; things like satellite radio for the long car rides and customer loyalty programs for airlines and hotels, allowing scouts to rack up points or miles during the season to use in the offseason.

”You’ve got travel agents on speed dial, and most of us try to only fly certain airlines because you get status on those airlines,” the scouting director said. “You don’t have to stand in long lines, you go right through and you get upgraded a lot. It sounds crazy, but a first-class seat on the plane is an absolute must, if you can get it. It may mean 30 minutes extra sleep in the morning because you don’t have to be at the airport so early, and we don’t get a ton of sleep in April and May. We’re running fast and hard.”

Always Moving

And that’s one thing that hasn’t changed: the travel. During a typical nine-day stretch in late April, Wilken went from his home in Dunedin, Fla., to Pensacola, Fla., Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Raleigh, Miami and then back home for a night before heading to Puerto Rico the following day. Over the nine days, Wilken was at 15 different airports and traveled more than 7,500 miles.

If anything, the travel has gotten worse because the scouting calendar has stretched out. Everyone knows about the hectic pace of the months leading up to the draft, beginning with the start of high school and college play in February. But after the draft in June, the Perfect Game National Showcase and USA Baseball’s Tournament of Stars quickly follow with top prospects for future drafts. July now brings the signing deadline, not to mention summer college leagues, more showcases and the possibility of doing pro scouting to help evaluate in-house talent or potential trade targets. August brings more of the same, and September features organizational meetings and scouting director meetings, as well as instructional league. The end of baseball season brings personnel changes, and the scouting continues with the Arizona Fall League and several significant high school events—and there’s always college fall ball if things get slow.

”The biggest thing that’s changed is the length of the scouting director’s year now,” the second NL scouting director said. “Everybody gets up there for two weeks before the draft to put it together. Then you go home and you’re not even home a week and the first showcase starts. Right away, we turn around and start the preparation for the following draft.”

Add it all up and it’s easy to see how scouting directors can spend 150-200 nights a year away from home. That’s why Wilken considered it important to get home for that one-night break in the midst of his April globetrotting.

”My wife and I were celebrating 10 years of meeting each other and starting dating and then on into marriage,” Wilken said. “So I was trying to figure a way where I could have some more time at home, so my wife wouldn’t change . . . Just getting home that evening and having three or four hours with my wife and then taking Monday off, we had a lot of fun together. It’s re-energizing and got me going for the next stint I went on.”

Wilken speaks from experience, as he is on his third marriage. While scouting directors might disagree about a lot of things, they all agree that scouting can take a toll on personal lives. Whether it’s for themselves or their scouts, they all try to find a way to balance a grueling work schedule with life away from baseball.

”This business is tough on families and marriages,” the first NL scouting director said. “So I want guys to get home and spend time with their family. Spring is tough, but I don’t want them to go to the point that they jeopardize anything with the family and children. You only get one shot at that. So I want to make sure to have a little balance.”

”If you’ve been gone for 17 days, you need to go home and do laundry and catch up with the wife and kids, pay your bills, go to the dentist, get your taxes done,” the second NL scouting director said. “Scouts aren’t robots. We don’t plug them in and recharge them every two weeks.”

He believes a happy family life makes for a better scout, so he goes out of his way to help things along.

”Two or three times a year, we send gifts to the wives, usually with a little note,” he said. “Valentine’s Day, there’s always a gift for the wives or girlfriends to show them how much we appreciate them. I was an area scout for a long time and I have a good wife that understands what I do, but it’s very difficult on a scout’s family.”

Love For The Game

Still, there they are all spring, perched behind the backstops at high school and college ballparks across the nation—at least most of them. Wilken prefers to move around at the ballpark. He’s usually hiding out down one of the lines, seeing things from a different angle. Being away from parents and fans also allows Wilken the freedom to grumble about college coaches misusing their bullpens or to criticize high school hitters who use metal bats at showcases, when every other player is using wood. He can’t help it. His passion for the game comes out in everything he does.

Wilken and the other scouting directors interviewed for this story uniformly love their jobs. The administrative aspects of the job, the travel, the headaches, these things they tolerate.

”It’s a process and I enjoy that,” the second NL scouting director said. “I love the draft, as I’m sure the other 29 scouting directors do, but it’s hard. It’s hard.”

The love stems from being at a field and seeing a player who grabs their attention. Wilken loves telling stories about players from years gone by, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s about seeing an otherworldly player like Bo Jackson in high school or a player more under the radar like Casey Blake, who Wilken drafted in the seventh round of the 1996 draft out of Wichita State. He remembers them all and loves passing down that knowledge to the next generation of scouts.

”He’s given me a vision that’s different from what I’m used to,” said Myers, the new area scout. “I brought him out to see a pitcher in my area and I’m behind home plate with the gun on him. You could see right away that the kid has physical attributes and stuff.

”Well, Tim went off to the side and he comes back to me and he says, ‘Did you see? There’s something wrong with his ankle.’ He was looking at something totally different than me right out of the chute, went over to the coach, talked to him and it turns out he had a blister on his foot. Myself and probably every other scout there didn’t see what he was seeing. He comes to the field and he sees different things.”

Even after all the bumpy plane rides, rainouts, nagging parents and late-night meals, it’s all worth it, because tomorrow could be the day a scouting director sees the player that eventually helps his team win the World Series.

Wilken enjoys watching his coworkers earn promotions and loves when his area scouts find big leaguers in the later rounds of the draft.

”Naturally, you have your hardships and failures,” Wilken said. “But what keeps everyone going is just that insatiable drive to get the next big leaguer.”

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/ask-ba/2012/2613467.html

By Jim Callis
May 28, 2012

Happy Memorial Day to everyone, and thanks to all of the military men and women who have sacrificed so much for our nation.

Just one week remains before the draft, and we’ll overwhelm you with preview coverage in the next seven days, including our new Top 500 Prospects list (with scouting reports), our usual in-depth state-by-state lists, a draft chat and Draft Tracker on Wednesday and at least two more first-round projections.

Because the draft starts on a Monday, we’ll push next week’s edition of Ask BA to Wednesday. That will allow me to answer your questions about what happens in the first few rounds. This week, we’ll focus on possible draft strategies.

Thanks for all the interesting work you guys do at Baseball America. I have read a lot about draft strategy. Will we see more college senior signs in later rounds as teams look to save money in order to pay extra cash for talent elsewhere? How do you think the first 10 rounds will play out?

Tom Grant
Reading, Mass.

The new draft rules, which give each team specific bonus pools in the first 10 rounds and mandate severe penalties for teams that exceed them (loss of a first-round pick for a 5 percent overage to the loss of two first-rounders for a 15 percent overage), don’t have any obvious loopholes. Teams can shift money around within their pools, but there’s no easy way to create extra cash.

If a club doesn’t sign a choice in the first 10 rounds, the value of his pick disappears from its pool. So if a team wants to pay one player more than his pick value, it has to save money elsewhere. I think we’ll see that happen in one of two ways.

In the early rounds, a club can take a player it likes more than anyone else and push him up its draft board. Think of some of the recent surprise first-rounders, such as Ben Revere (Twins, 2007), Hayden Simpson (Cubs, 2010) or Cito Culver (Yankees, 2010). More of those types of choices are bound to happen in the first couple of rounds, where a team is strongly convicted on a player and can take a discount as well. At the top of the draft, teams are more likely to take the cheaper guy first and the overpay guy second, rather than the other way around.

The other avenue to freeing up some cash is what Tom suggests, which is to take college seniors who have little leverage and pay them below their pick value. That could happen by taking a quality senior such as Rice righthander Matthew Reckling, pushing him into the third round and paying him in the low six figures. Teams also could take a garden-variety senior who typically will sign for $5,000, choose him in the first 10 rounds and save that way.

I believe most of the top talents in this draft will go in the first 50 picks, because otherwise it will be tough to pay them. Most of the second-tier high school players who are willing to sign for $500,000 to $750,000 will go in the second and third rounds, for the same reason. After that, I envision a lot of college and junior college players in rounds 4-10.

I know that the new draft rules no longer allow teams to sign draftees to major league contracts. But isn’t that a formality that can be skirted by promising a 2012 callup?

Bill Sanders
Conway, Ark.

Teams are prohibited from doing anything to circumvent the new draft rules, and a guaranteed September callup would qualify. But as long as there’s nothing in writing, it would be hard to prove if a big league promotion were a prearranged deal. And it has happened in the past, with the Giants and 2008 supplemental first-round pick Conor Gillaspie one recent example.

But a September callup won’t come close to what a major league contract could do under the previous rules. A callup gives a player about one-sixth of the major league minimum salary (roughly $80,000) and the side benefits that come with a spot on the 40-man roster. A big league deal allowed a team to give much more money to a player and to spread it out over several years.

In 2011, the Mariners gave No. 2 overall choice Danny Hultzen a $6.35 million bonus and an additional $2.15 million in guarantees as part of a major league contract. Trevor Bauer (No. 3, Diamondbacks) got an extra $1.05 million, Dylan Bundy (No. 4, Orioles) landed $2.25 million, Anthony Rendon (No. 6, Nationals) received $1.2 million and Matt Purke (third round, Nationals) added $1.4 million. None of them got September callups, but all of them immediately joined 40-man rosters.

I’d bet you’d see a number of teams get around the bonus pools by guaranteeing players salaries in major league contracts if that were permissible. It’s such an obvious maneuver that MLB closed that possibility in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Two years ago, the Diamondbacks selected Barret Loux with the sixth overall pick, chose not to sign him after he didn’t pass their physical and received the No. 7 choice in 2011 as compensation. Last year’s draft was loaded and Arizona was able to scoop up future ace Archie Bradley with that pick. Why don’t we see more teams opting not to sign their top pick if they know the next year’s draft is considerably more talented? With a relatively weak crop this year, will we see any clubs in the top 10 opt for a 2013 comp pick?

Tom Segal
Chelsea, N.Y.

I doubt you’ll see a team take a player in the first round with the intention of not signing him. The tenure of general managers and scouting directors is too short, especially with a club picking at the top of the draft, and teams want to sign talented players today rather than tomorrow. There’s also no guarantee that a pick the following year will be significantly better.

The Diamondbacks took Loux in part because he agreed to a below-market $2 million bonus, then signed Bradley for $5 million. If Arizona had kept the same price point for that choice last year, it wouldn’t have gotten Bradley.

The only time I can remember a team purposely punting with its first-rounder came when the Reds selected Jeremy Sowers 20^th overall in 2001. Sowers was dead-set on attending Vanderbilt and had an asking price in the neighborhood of $3 million. Cincinnati never offered him half of that while trying to solve a budget bonus crisis.

The Reds’ amateur budget had been thin since they spent $2.1 million to purchase outfielder Alejandro Diaz from Japan’s Hiroshima Toyo Carp in March 1999. They signed Ty Howington, their 1999 first-rounder, with $1.75 million borrowed from their 2000 budget. In 2000, Cincinnati gave first-rounder David Espinosa and second-rounder Dane Sardinha big league deals with no bonuses and paid sandwich pick Dustin Mosely with $937,000 from its 2001 budget. By not signing Sowers, the Reds finally stopped borrowing money from their future.